We're not based in the valley. | Hacker News Reader

We're not based in the valley.

seeinginteractive.com

82 pointsjnovek62 comments

There's a difference between being defensive about where you are not located, and actively promoting your favored location. I was born, raised and still live in the Silicon Valley, but even a remote simpleton like me knows how cool tech can be in Austin TX...

http://geekaustin.org/

http://sdf.lonestar.org/

As for startup stuff going on in Austin, from JUST today's reading I noticed the following being in Austin:

http://blog.asmartbear.com

http://wpengine.com/

http://www.capitalthought.com/

I'll still prefer my home over yours, but your home is also pretty sweet (and worth bragging about).

As far as I'm concerned, you all have it easy. Try running a startup from a remote town in Greece!

Try Alaska. I keep getting phone calls at 4 AM several times a month.

OK, you guys both win.

That's nothing! When I were a lad, we ran our startup from Arrowtown in the heart of New Zealand's Southern Alps - and we still do!

www.schoolconferences.com

ok, you won, Wellington is clearly less remote than Arrowtown. iWantMyName is based in NZ and we love it. I see the valley not as a requirement to be a successful startup "in the US".

Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FatHLHG2uGY

Pfffft. Dunedin is where it's at!

Nothing's a requirement, they just raise your chances of success.

Yeah, but it's Alaska. Walk a mile and you cross two time zones.

"The weather is awesome! We’ve got a humid subtropical climate."

These two sentences seem contradictory to me.

In North America it probably doesn't mean what you think:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humid_subtropical_climate

No, it means exactly what you think. Summer in Texas is miserable.

Highs exceed 90 °F (32.2 °C) on 109 days per year, and 100 °F (37.8 °C) on 12.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin,_Texas

It depends on what you like. I spent my entire life until I was 27 in the frigidity of Northern Minnesota. After that, I rather enjoy the fact that nearly every day in Austin is a t-shirt day.

True, but I suspect the average person wouldn't describe a humid day at 95 °F as "awesome weather".

Austin isn't Houston, it's not that humid.

It is in the morning:

http://www.cityrating.com/cityhumidity.asp?City=Austin

If you're coding, you're in the air conditioning when it's 95°F and out in the mornings/evenings. I spent 9 months in Austin starting in February and it's not that bad. I grew up in Atlanta (85-95°F and 80% humidity) and summertime was about the same but the winter was nicer.

I still miss the food. I can get the quality here in NYC in a restaurant near the barrio but not the prices.

Citing air conditioning doesn't mesh very well with describing the weather as awesome. Lows of >70 with humidity mean you're going to need some AC help sleeping, too.

Compared to, say, Santa Cruz (just over the hill from the Silicon Valley) with yearly average ranges from 39-60 (Jan), to 52-76 (Aug), with most of the days from the spring thru fall in the high 60s, low 70s, which I personally think is ideal.

Or, for us northern folks that the winters are nice and mild. I guess it depends where you're coming from. Point taken.

That means 3 months of "a bit too hot" (although 90ies isn't too bad), and 9 months of "pretty good". Someplace like Oregon, where I grew up, has 2/3 months of beautiful summer weather, and 9 months of mostly crappy weather.

These two sentences seem contradictory to me.

They don't sound remotely contradictory to me. Heat and humidity FTW, as far as I'm concerned. Cold weather bites. :-(

No one ever claims it's impossible to be successful outside of The Valley. All anyone ever says, at most, is that all things considered it's an advantage.

It's a completely false controversy, and always has been.

I think the true controversy actually lies in how many of those advantages are even still advantages, or how much longer they will be.

The NYC technorati feel that with enough investments it will one day usurp the Valley as the technology hub of the world.

I'm pretty certain that will NOT happen and it will be more widespread. In fact, places like Austin with it's climate, the young people it attracts, atmosphere and relatively reasonable prices have a greater chance of becoming a global tech hub than NYC does. NYC has way too many other things going on to be heavily focused on tech.

I moved from Austin to the Valley three years ago.

When I came here, I missed Austin a lot. Now, although I know I'll move back there some day, I'm going to miss the Tech Culture of the valley.

Austin's missing populated hackerspaces like the Hacker Dojo and Noisebridge, and generally lacks technology meetups and hacker parties. The tech-based people are there, but there's not much of a cohesive culture yet. (This is a solvable problem!)

Of course, Silicon Valley is missing out on the Alamo Drafthouse... which is one of the best reasons to live in Austin.

Do you have office space in Austin, or are you really in Pflugerville? Your contact page only mentions College Station and Pflugerville.

Anyway, this was news to me - are there any other YC companies here in Austin? I thought I (and I'm just an employee of one) was alone. We should have beers. :)

Me too. I'm the founder of a company in Austin that interviewed for YC this winter, but got rejected.

If anyone reading this wants to meet up in Austin, my email's in my profile.

Okay Okay, Austin area. The plan is to move downtown once we've figured out how big of a place we need--right now we're growing at 200% every three months so we need that to level out first as everyone wants a five year lease.

Feel free to hit me up (lloyd@seeinginteractive.com) or stop by our office in Pflugerville.

Why Austin (and not New York or Boston)? What was it like doing YC and then not staying in SV? Was there any disagreement among the founders or investors about moving away from the valley?

Not really. The investors like it because we save a bunch of money. And the founders are both from the Midwest so we like it. Actually, we're a Texas-based company (maybe the only YC company that's not a DE corporation) and have always planned to have this be our base of operations.

Also, no state income tax!

Is living in california worth over 10k a year? (assuming you have a reasonable salary)

You pay no income tax in Texas? Really?!

Yes really. No state income tax.

How are the other taxes? I know that some Oregonians I know often talk about how no-sales-tax Oregon has very high property tax to compensate.

8.25% sales tax in Texas (8.25% in CA, 8.875% in NYC).

CA's sales tax is county/city dependent, starting from a 8.25% base. It's 9.25% in San Jose, 9.5% somewhere nearby, closer to 9.75% in SF, and less than 9% some places.

see http://www.boe.ca.gov/sutax/pam71.htm .

Property taxes in Oregon are a little funny. It depends a lot on where your house is located and when it was built. I pay about 0.6% of current market value annually. I have friends that pay 2%.

Do you pay national income tax or something? I find it hard to believe that you get to keep 100% of the money you make.

Yes, you can't avoid federal taxes. You just don't have an additional ~10% on top of that from the state.

Besides federal income tax (as noted by another commenter), there's local sales tax, state property tax, and who knows what-all else. Income tax is sometimes one piece of a state's tax system, but it's never the only piece.

Florida either, but the humidity is even worse!

NV too.

The salaries are proportionately higher.

Not really. I've lived in both and the salaries are maybe 20-25% lower in Austin, but everything else is much cheaper for more value. Especially when you're paying for grown up stuff like 3-4 bedroom homes in safe neighborhoods, day care/nannies, etc. That stuff is off the charts expensive in the Valley. And your tax bracket is higher along with your salary.

I can't imagine being an entrepreneur in the Valley with kids without at LEAST a few million in cash. In Austin you only need 1. :)

I wasn't accounting for cost of living, only taxes.

Property tax is 3%/yr, re-assessed annually. Own a 300k house and you will pay 9k/yr in property tax, even if you don't make 100k.

If you live in Austin, your tax rate is around 2.3%. 3% is high for anywhere in Texas, I think.

If you're a business owner or remote freelancer, it may net you more money to be headquartered in a no-income-tax state (e.g. Texas, Florida, Nevada, Washington). This is assuming you're charging similar prices as your competitors based in SF/SV or NYC.

If you're a single employee, your best bet is to live somewhere with high salaries (California or New York) and be frugal with your expenses.

If you're an employee that's married and/or have kids, I don't know. I don't have that experience yet. Best to ask someone who does.

--> BUT income tax is just one of many state taxes. For an aggregate tax %, see The Tax Foundation's report on State "Tax Burdens." Scroll down in the doc to 2008. http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/336.html

Here's some of the state tax burdens:

* Nevada: 6.6%

* Florida: 7.4%

* Texas: 8.4%

* Washington: 8.9%

* Oregon: 9.4%

* Massachusetts: 9.5%

* California: 10.5%

* New York: 11.7%

Not to mention 0% short and long term capital gains. That's another 10% over California, and it's where it counts.

I'm in austin, but I keep wishing that I lived in Silicon Valley or PNW - namely due to:

* greater ability to commute by bicycle/train/public transit. Austin's bicycle scene is growing, but it's still fairly impractical due to the lack of public transit infrastructure.

* potential for more outdoor trips - hiking around austin is fun when there's water around, but we easily have drought years too which aren't as fun. Plus, I'd think planning a ski or surfing trip is much easier out west than here. Many of my valley friends afford to share a house in tahoe during the winter.

On the downside, I think you'll be disappointed with the bicycling situation in SF. Yes there are bike lanes, but it seems like automobile drivers are hellbent on murdering all bicyclists.

On the upside, if you like the outdoors, there are very few places in the U.S. that are more beautiful than northern California. (I think that Austin is the best place to run my company, but everywhere had tradeoffs.)

Is living in california worth over 10k a year? (assuming you have a reasonable salary)

Yes. Of course, YMMV.

The model of SV has proven to be one to emulate. It's only a matter of time before other locals with that crucial mix of money and good schools get some version of it.

This is the second link from seeinginteractive.com in as many days that didn't say much of anything other than 'work for us'. I wonder how much fake controversy they are going to keep throwing at HN in order to recruit.

This was written as a clarification since so many people who applied assumed we were in the Bay Area or Silicon Valley.

Congratulations. I've been looking at moving to Austin, recently. I'm from Dallas, so I'm familiar with the area and it's a great one.

I moved down to Austin (for school @ UT) from Arlington about 5 years ago and haven't left since :)

Glad to see you guys coming back to Texas. We definitely need a larger startup community out here.

Austin startup here as well. I actually moved from San Francisco to Austin to launch http://www.ideaffect.com.

Also, hey Jason! Still owe you a beer sometime.

That's awesome, I was going to go with UserVoice for my feedback widget, but I'm gonna have to support a fellow Texas startup and go with you guys now. I'm based in Dallas myself.

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